HOW TO LOWER A HIGH TEMPERATURE.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXX, Issue 4519, 14 September 1875, Page 3

HOW TO LOWER A HIGH TEMPERATURE.

(From Public Health.) During the excessive heat of summer, when sitting within doors is even more conducive to discomfort than walking at a moderate pace out of doors, it may be useful to bear in mind a very simple application—practicable by anyone—of a natural law, which will enable a professional man to write without the slightest inconvenience from the heated atmosphere. Every child at school learns something about the influence of water in modifying climate, and any person, however ill-informed, who has passed through a floricultural exhibition or a building like the Crystal Palace must have noticed how gratefully cool the atmosphere always is in the immediate neighborhood of fountains playing. Just the same general lowering of our temperature may be produced in any private sitting-room without the expense of fountains. A basin or dish large enough to present a good surface, filled with water, and placed on the centre of a table in the fore part of the day, is amply sufficient for the purpose ; the writer has even found nn ordinary glass tumbler, full of water, renewed once (late in the afternoon), potential enough when he has sat all the day engaged in reading and writing in a small study on the hottest days we have had during four years

ast. The hot air takes up the water in the form of atmospheric vapour, and, enacting in little the part of clouds, diffuses the greater coolness of the water throughout the room until both air and water are at the same point; when that is attained, if the heat of the day be not spent, the water needs renewing. Of course the effect does not depend upon any specific form of vessel. This may be plain or it may be ornamental ; it may take the form of a table decoration ;it may even—this hint is for the ladies and for artists—be a species of well, with a .flower vase - springing from the centre, the welcome perfumes of which shall be borne together with cooling influences by the watercharged air. There is only one condition imperative—namely, that free contact of air and water over the whole surface of the latter shall not be obstructed.